Use of Freewheel in Your Bike/Motor

Single speed bikes are a perfect low maintenance way to get around the town/city. Without any complicated group set and gearing system, you will have lesser parts to worry and maintain.

Most of the single speed bikes/motors have flip flop wheel so you can select between the hair raising fixed riding or popular single speed ruedas libres. When you opt for freewheel, you don’t need to pedal all time, still you benefit from simplicity (increased effort) of just having a single gear.

What’s Freewheel?

In automotive or mechanical engineering, freewheel and overrunning clutch is an important device in the transmission, which disengages driveshaft from a driven shaft when driven shaft rotates a bit faster than driveshaft. Overdrive is mistakenly called freewheel, but generally is unrelated.

Freewheel: How Does It Function?

Freewheel that is known as block, includes single sprocket or set of the sprockets mounted on the body that have internal ratcheting mechanism & mount on the threaded hub. This screw straight on your bike rear wheel and mechanism that perfectly locks once you pedal – forcing its wheel to drive by train. When you are cruising along that is not pedaling, and going backwards, this spins very freely.

When to Replace the Freewheel?

As with majority of the parts on bike, there is the time when you want to replace freewheel. You may lengthen your freewheel lifespan just by looking after this properly. Regularly put grease or oil on freewheels.

Put your wheel/bike on the side and try getting oil through its small gaps of freewheel, so it will reach ball bearings. Use this same lubricant you use for cleaning and lubing your chain.

It has a similar effect as on the chain, thus removing dirt and reducing any risk of this rusting up & ceasing. Even though the single speed bikes need less maintenance than any other bikes, still you must look after this chain.

Final Words

Some freewheels are made for the tool-free removal, whereas others need some specialist tools. DT You need to look for the quality freewheels that need complete set of the different tools that will help to disassemble them, while you may get at others with the standard set of keys. Make sure you check out the best quality freewheels available in the market.

When servicing your freewheel, there are plenty of small parts that will keep the tabs on, mainly in the pawl-based units, this working carefully ad systematically is important.